


The Better to See You With, My Dear

by quixoticquest



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anxiety, Emotional Constipation, Fluff, High School, Kissing, M/M, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 19:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16203923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticquest/pseuds/quixoticquest
Summary: Prompt: “richie gets contacts and eddie is feeling ????? about it”





	The Better to See You With, My Dear

Thirteen months, from kindergarten to first grade, marked the span of time Eddie Kaspbrak had known a Richie Tozier with perfect vision - and he didn’t remember a lick of it. Not the bare-faced expressions around the storytime mat, not the way dark brown eyes appeared without bugging behind enormous lenses. Not when Richie started squinting at the chalkboard in the October of first grade, not when he tripped and broke his nose on Halloween because he couldn’t see to begin with and certainly not out the tiny holes of his ghost sheet. Eddie remembered first grade when Richie got his glasses though, and even though he remembered in kindergarten too. Sometimes he found himself arguing with Bill or Stanley about the actuality of events, and even Richie’s own input wasn’t always enough to settle the stubborn hypochondriac.

Richie’s Glasses was just one of those things that had Always Been or felt like it had anyway. The chances of catching a glimpse of him with them off, out of the pool or at a sleepover, were so fleeting that Glasses just became the default. Growing up, the only thing Eddie could count on to never change was his friends, their quirks, familiar and comforting.

So you could imagine his concern when Richie announced his parents had finally caved and were taking him to get fitted for contact lenses.

Trashmouth Tozier had been begging to trade in his specs for years. The Losers Club had been on the receiving end of his whining for just as long, constantly groaning about how much of a drag it was to push them up his nose and clean them and keep them from getting broken (which he wasn’t very good at). But with his own hygiene regimen spotty at best, especially during the pubescent years, Mr. and Mrs. Tozier weren’t super keen to get Richie something that would require constant upkeep like that. 

It wasn’t until Richie turned sixteen that all his whining paid off - and by then, Eddie thought he’d be stuck in glasses forever.

A Friday afternoon marked the end of what had Always Been. Richie left class early for his appointment at the eye doctor, rubbing his hand through Eddie’s hair on his way past his desk, pointing dramatically with both hands at the trademark frames across his face, before disappearing out the door with two thumbs up. It probably wasn’t the last Eddie would ever see of Richie with his glasses on, but it might as well have been.

That idiot refused to hang out with any of them the following weekend, drawing out the days and hours until Monday like some kind of sadist. The worst part was that he had homeroom with Beverly and Bill. Eddie wouldn’t even see Richie until fourth period.

“Mike said Ben said Bev said it was really weird,” Stan reported to Eddie during second period gym, and left it at that since there were balls to hit and bases to run.

The worst part was fourth period was Spanish, and Eddie had gone above his academic expectations for once and taken the Honors class, where they weren’t allowed to speak English, even to ask to use the bathroom. If he had known Richie was going to throw this curveball at him last year when he registered for classes, he would have stayed in Advanced and fucked Honors courses altogether.

There was no time to prepare - only to school himself when Richie came through the door, a couple of seconds before the bell, and descended into the seat beside Eddie as if nothing had happened. Really, technically, nothing  _ had _ happened - but try telling that to the wound up dork gnawing the end of his pencil like a Twizzler. 

Beverly was right, it was super weird. Richie’s glasses made his eyes huge, all big and shiny, and now they almost looked too small for his face. Eddie could see his eyebrows better, which made him even more expressive if that was even possible. It was easier to see his cheekbones too, though nothing could be done about all the miles of face hiding under his mophead until he bit the bullet and got a proper haircut.

“¿No me veo hermosa?” Richie asked, cheesing with all his teeth, bare eyes wide.

“Cállate,” Eddie griped, fixing his gaze on the chalkboard at the front of the room before he could be caught staring.

A couple days went by, and besides the occasional remark from their friends (and Richie’s constant boasting), nothing really changed. Or rather, a lot had changed, but Eddie seemed to be the only one who noticed. Was one day really all they were going to devote to this? Richie’s entire appearance had been reshaped with the exclusion of one single accessory! The entire fabric of who he was as a person had been altered forever.

Of course, Eddie couldn’t say that out loud because he  _ knew  _ it was ridiculous. Which might have been the worst part.

A week or so after the initial reveal, they had all gathered at Bill’s house to brainstorm for the college applications that would be due to submit as soon as the end of this summer. Eddie had been staring at the same blank page in his composition book for the last hour, scratching aimless doodles into the margin that probably wouldn’t have any bearing on the schools he was looking at (rather, the ones his guidance counselor was telling him to look at).

“Do you think I need to put varsity football  _ and  _ JV?” Mike asked, brows furrowed at his extensive list of extracurriculars. “Or is varsity big enough that JV is a given?”

“Here’s what I think: ditch them both,” Richie announced, pointing the end of his pen at Mike. “Better yet, dump the resume and essay altogether. Just submit a headshot and you’ll have all those schools begging for you to commit.”

Mike beamed. Beside him, Stanley leaned forward to tuck his chin onto his fist - fretting over a list even longer than Mike’s. Eddie was still trying to decide if the one day of mock trial he attended sophomore year counted as anything.

“Don’t tell me that’s what  _ you’re  _ doing,” Stan drawled at Richie - who sighed, his too-small eyes fluttering shut so he could tilt his head back.

“I could, but it wouldn’t be fair. It’s a shame, but this mug outshines all the volunteer work in the world. ‘Specially with all my handsome out on display for everyone to see now. Isn’t that right, Eds?”

Eddie clamped his tongue between his teeth and grunted, a paltry shadow of his usually feisty retorts. They were becoming harder and harder to dish out since they usually thrived on eye contact, which was becoming harder and harder to  _ maintain  _ with Richie looking like  _ that _ .

They went on scribbling away, some more than others. At some point, while Bill was on the phone ordering pizza, Richie stood, hiking his legs overhead and limb alike to make it to the bathroom, backpack clutched in one hand - not that Eddie really took notice, since the seven of them had been getting up for various reasons all night.

He did notice, however, when Richie came back wearing his glasses.

“Well look who it is,” Beverly chuckled (because no one could ever let anything go unnoticed among the seven of them). “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, laugh all you want,” Richie retorted, arms rising over his head in some gesture of surrender, even as he smiled from under those familiar frames. “I can’t afflict you with my drop dead unfiltered gorgeousness  _ all _ the time. It would be irresponsible.”

“But your obnoxious personality is totally fine, right?” Eddie snorted - unaware of just how easily it came out when that tortoise shell barrier was there.

Richie grinned his Richie grin. “Truth is, if you  _ must  _ know, my eyes were starting to hurt. Figured I’d switch so I didn’t have to turn in early. Now, let’s see if I remember how to work these things.”

If this was the return to form Eddie had been craving, maybe that meant he should savor it. There was no doubt he would see Richie in his glasses several times before the year was even out, though few and far between they may be. 

This, he decided, glancing sidelong at the mophead trashmouth jackass beside him, was his opportunity to kiss goodbye that thing that had Always Been, and rev up for something new. Suck it up, take it like a champ. Like an adult, and not a baby who cried over object permanence.

But the next day at school, Eddie didn’t get a chance to put his rev-up to the test, because Richie came in with his specs on.

“I was running late,” he explained, launching into a long account of a hectic morning at lunchtime, that Eddie couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to care about.

Maybe he was late the next day too because once more he showed up bespectacled. No one really cared to ask, and he didn’t care to explain. But as the days crept on into weeks, into a month, the contacts seemed to have disappeared altogether.

Chief of all who didn’t care about this particular regression was Eddie - so much so that he didn’t even realize he didn’t care. He probably didn’t notice there was a difference at all. After all, what was so weird about Richie wearing glasses?

With finals coming up and Spanish kicking his ass, circumstances called for a study session. Eddie almost managed to intercept Richie at the front door and bustle him up to his room, but his mom’s Sonia Sense must have started tingling because she found them just in time to make it very clear that there would be no Toziers in her house after nine o’clock.

“I brought the new  _ X-Men _ ,” Richie proclaimed in a stage whisper when they reached Eddie’s room, wiggling a glossy issue in a plastic sleeve at Eddie.

“You’re here to study Spanish,” Eddie said at a completely normal volume. “Not Rogue’s boobs.”

Richie blew a raspberry. “She’s not even in this one, doofus. And last I checked, you’re pushing a B minus, and I’m on the star students poster.”

“Then stop speaking English and help me!”

Usually, study sessions devolved into aimless chaos pretty quickly, but they did a pretty good job of keeping on track this time, and Eddie did a pretty good job of keeping Richie and his constant asinine distractions at bay. It didn’t matter that the four-eyed idiot kept snickering at his color-coded flashcards either.

“I can’t remember the word for broom,” Eddie murmured at some point, pushing his top lip around with the eraser on his pencil.

“My mom said I better start wearing my contacts again or she’s not gonna pay for them,” Richie sighed. 

Eddie looked up from his seat on the floor, arms folded around his flashcards on the edge of his bed. Richie, flopped across the mattress, flipped absently through his notebook full of chicken scratch. The bend of his head and the frames of his glasses concealed his expression ever so slightly.

“Huh?” Eddie asked dumbly.

Richie glanced over and pushed his specs up by the pad of his thumb. “La escoba,” he pronounced.

“You haven’t been wearing your contacts?” Eddie specified.

“Oh, I have,” Richie replied, nodding confidently. “I wear them with my glasses. That’s double the corrected vision. I can see into the fifth dimension.”

Eddie mimicked him in an unintelligible tone. 

“Richie, why aren’t you wearing your contacts?” The question made him feel entirely too much like a parent. Hell, maybe that’s exactly what Mrs. Tozier had asked, hands on her hips and all.

Twisting his mouth every which way, Richie adjusted himself, pushing his notebook to the side, since he obviously wasn’t using it for anything practical. The yellow lamplight illuminating Eddie’s room sent the oblongs of white on the lenses of Richie’s Glasses around the frames as he moved. 

Suddenly Eddie remembered the tangible possibility of Richie’s Glasses disappearing again. It wasn’t a very fun thought to remember.

“I dunno,” Richie finally confessed, setting his face in his hands, and his elbows on his knees. “It’s just - I mean I guess it’s just not how I thought they were gonna be.”

“Are they uncomfortable?” Eddie asked. 

“Only for the first couple days.”

“Is it a lot to keep them clean?”

“No, you just hit ‘em with the contact solution. If I can’t aim and squirt then what kind of man would I be, Eds?”

Eddie huffed and rolled his eyes. He should have known better than to indulge  _ I dunno _ and all the potentials for humor that might follow. 

Situating himself squarely in front of his notes, though, it only took a couple seconds for Richie to roll himself back into Eddie’s line of sight - effectively demanding his attention again.

“I guess I just,” Richie mumbled, poking around one of the flashcards -  _ armario _ -closet, to be precise. “I dunno. Thought I’d look better without glasses.”

Kneeling on the floor, with Richie laid out in front of him, put them basically at eye level. From here, though, Richie had to lift his gaze ever so slightly. Eddie watched his brows arch from behind his specs, dark eyes blinking. An unfiltered view - sort of.

“Look better?” Eddie repeated.

“Well, when you get called four-eyes your whole life…” Richie huffed, and rolled back again, always restless. “I just thought it’d be different y’know? I’ve got such a lousy prescription and I thought I’d finally look like less of a dumbass nerd with contacts but...maybe I’m overthinking it but it just doesn’t seem like you guys like me when I don’t wear my glasses.”

Eddie’s face screwed up. “What?”

Richie shrugged. “Maybe I talked it up too much but I was kind of hoping you’d make a bigger deal. No one really said anything or talked about it so I was like, oh shit, maybe I am hideous. Or maybe the glasses are just the perfect accessory to my comedy and I’ve ruined the whole schtick by dropping them. Or, you know, I’m hideous. Either or.”

“It’s not a big deal because you’re just you, Richie,” Eddie stated (completely unaware of what a hypocrite he was being). “So what if we didn’t say anything? We can’t go on and on about your face for the rest of our stupid lives.”

“Yeah, but…” Now, Richie sighed again, perhaps becoming too self-aware of how serious he had made the moment. “Eddie, it kind of felt like you couldn’t even talk or look at me when I wasn’t wearing my glasses.”

This was the part where Eddie felt like the biggest ass in the whole world. He might as well have turned into a donkey, like in Looney Tunes.

“Which could totally be just me,” Richie went on, smacking himself upside the head. “But that’s just what it felt like. So maybe it’s just me. I’m perfectly happy to be the idiot on this one. I’m usually very good at it.”

There was no way he could focus on Spanish now. Eddie collected all his flashcards and placed them in a neat little stack on the floor, so he could push himself up to sit on his own bed. 

It was a crisis about fucking  _ glasses _ . It didn’t need to get that deep. And yet, somehow, he felt like he owed Trashmouth Tozier somewhat of an apology - if you could fucking believe it.

“It’s not  _ just _ the contacts,” Eddie confessed, tipping his head down.

“Aha, I was right,” Richie declared in a lackluster tone.

“It’s everything,” Eddie blurted right on his heels, sagging with a deep breath. “Everything is changing, Rich. And everything that changes just reminds me that all the stuff that’s Always Been is gonna be over next year when we graduate. Braces are coming off and bikes are getting sold and we’re all starting college applications that we’re not even going to submit for six months!”

He dropped his hands in his lap, slapping against his thighs, a crisp punctuation to his rant. Out of breath, Eddie puffed through his nose. Of course, now the room had to be dead silent, clawing and prodding at him with the reminder that this was way too honest for a study session.

Richie stared at him though, peculiarly thoughtful. At the very least, he wasn’t looking so much like a kicked, bespectacled puppy anymore.

“Well,” he finally said, steepling his hands between them, “this may come as a surprise to you, Eds, but I’ve always had eyes.”

“Oh shut up,” Eddie snapped (almost relieved for the lighthearted response). “You’ve always had  _ glasses _ . And now you won’t, because you’re finally old enough to have contacts, and soon you’ll be old enough to move out and get out of dodge like we’re all gonna do.”

“Yeah, but isn’t that what we want?” Richie asked.

“I guess. It just feels like I liked thinking about it better as something far away then something we’re all flying toward at top speed.”

Childhood sucked. Any of the seven of them could tell you that. So why did the thought of it truly ending ache so much? Were the losers worth more than leaving Derry? Apparently fucking not, since they were all perfectly content to make their attempts to escape.

Just as Eddie was feeling sorry for himself, staring at the patterns in his quilt, Richie did something quite uncharacteristic. Just out of his line of sight, the trashmouth put his hand over the top of Eddie’s, curling them together in some gesture of support.

It was pretty awkward, but comforting in a weird, forced kind of way.

“I’m still me,” Richie said, offering his solid gaze when Eddie looked up. “Fuck you know I’m an idiot with the glasses on  _ and _ off. That’s never gonna change. Hell, you can even call me four eyes of you want. The other two could be - hm - my nipples maybe? I’ve got that one eyed snake in my pants but that only makes three.”

“Richie-”

“The  _ point _ is, Edward,” he continued, somehow lofty and sincere at the same time, “not everything is changing. Maybe we don’t get to sitcom it up at some university all seven of us. But we still have each other, as mushy gushy as that sounds. I’ll always be a phone call away. You called me to make me cart my ass over here. And I know the others feel the same way.”

What do you know? For all the stupid crap that came out of his mouth, Richie said something intelligent (and comforting) for once.

Before the telltale sting in his eyes could gain any traction, Eddie sighed his cares away or at least tried to. A motivational speech couldn’t fix everything. But just Richie saying it,  _ Richie  _ of all people, was enough to set him at ease. At least for now. And to think it hadn’t even been about Eddie in the first place.

“I know,” he answered, finally, soundly. If that wasn’t the only thing he was sure of, then he wasn’t sure of anything.

“I’m sorry I made you think I think you’re ugly,” Eddie added, deciding he wasn’t a huge fan of how he phrased that. “You’re not, I promise.”

Richie blinked at him expectantly. His hand still sat clammy and warm on top of Eddie’s.

“Well, if I’m not ugly, then what am I, Eds?”

“Oh, don’t you start,” Eddie ground out, pulling himself away.

“No no, this is important to me.” Richie sniffled dramatically, wiping away nonexistent tears from under his glasses, advancing incrementally. “You really hurt me, y’know? I’m broken-hearted. I might never heal.”

“Sure you won’t.”

“Come on, Eds!” At this point, Richie was practically bent over Eddie, and if he didn’t want to slide off the bed, he had to prop himself up on his hands, with nowhere else to go. “If I’m not an uggo then I must be something else won’t you please tell me what it is? Boost a poor boy’s self-esteem.”

“As if  _ you _ need a self-esteem boost!”

“Pretty please, Eds? I’m dying here. The anticipation is killing me.”

“You’re okay looking I guess!” Maybe it was important that Eddie say it or maybe it wasn’t but he figured it was the least he could do (even if it warmed his face in the process). “You got a strong jaw and nice lips and sometimes I hear girls talking about your cheekbones and I guess I sort of agree with them!”

Maybe, Eddie realized retrospectively, he had revealed too much. Mostly because, Richie was staring at him from behind those big lenses - just a little too tenderly to be joking. 

“Whoa,” he muttered. “That’s like, the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me. Besides my mom.”

Eddie blinked, feeling the heat spread further into his face. “Well I didn’t mean-”

Somehow managing not to send Eddie careening off the bed, Richie pressed forward enough to catch his lips in an entirely unexpected kiss. What Eddie lacked in mobility at the moment, he made up for in reaction time and found it in him to tip his chin up into Richie’s mouth without suffering all the shock and surprise that might have him freezing unhelpfully. 

Richie got his arms around him and figured out how to pull him back onto the bed, which enabled Eddie to get a grip of his own, clinging to Richie’s shirt for all he was worth while their lips shifted and bumped together. Such a natural progression, it was a wonder it hadn’t occurred until just this moment.

Before they could get too carried away (which Eddie wasn’t super opposed to), Richie broke, huffing for air, as if he had been submerged in water. Rather than dwell on what kind of idiot couldn’t pace his own breathing (because he wasn’t one to talk about respiratory issues), Eddie stared up at Richie’s face, from the cradle of his arms, Klimt style.

To think Mrs. Kaspbrak was just downstairs tuning in to Dateline.

Without thinking very much about it, Eddie got one hand free to reach up to Richie’s face and pulled his glasses off carefully. That bare gaze followed his hand all the way to the side, as he folded up the arms and put them somewhere where they wouldn’t get in the way.

Richie’s eyes weren’t too small. They were probably perfectly normal sized, almost droopy in a way that was too endearing for his own good. And of course, there were those pink lips, and those cheekbones (which Eddie may or may not have come up with all on his own, no girls required). 

“Well that’s just counterproductive,” Richie stated, quirking a smile in Eddie’s direction.

“How come?”

“What’s the point of no glasses if I can’t see you? Need those corrective lenses to ogle that booty, baby.”

Before Eddie could snap at him, he was kissed again, sweet and sound, and he couldn’t argue with that.

Maybe it was okay if some things that had Always Been changed. Eddie, for one, was certainly glad that he didn’t have a laundry list of medication to take any more. Things like Bill getting over his stutter and Stanley getting less anxious were good. Kissing Richie regularly was certainly a welcome change. And Eddie could learn to love a Richie with contacts, even if it was different from what had Always Been. 

Just so long as Richie blinked his lenses in on the first try because watching the little disk flop out between his eyelashes was the fastest way to make Eddie gag.


End file.
